The days of collecting hotel points and travel miles seem like a nightmare. Although you were willing to travel at the drop of a hat before you were married and had children, the more efficient use of video conferencing equipment means that you can now meet with many of the clients you need to see without leaving your office. It is not that you refuse to travel any more, it is just that even clients seem to appreciate a few meetings in the comfort of their own office without the expense of airline tickets and hotel reservations.
Video conferencing equipment allows business to pick and chose when they want to endure expensive travel. At the same time, voice and data network services allow clients and employees who never would have made the travel list an opportunity to participate in meetings. With advanced network cabling standards, even small businesses can wheel and deal with potential clients around the world on a far less expensive budget.
Video Conferencing Equipment Can Set Your Company Apart from Competitors
Just 20 years ago, business telephone systems simply managed customer phone calls in and out of an office and employee phone calls between workers. Today, however, that is no longer the case. With the help of technical support services, today’s business telephone systems also manage a variety of other communication and security features, including:
- Monitoring front entrances and allowing employee only access.
- Call forwarding and messaging centers that allow employees to use cell phones, home phones, and office phone to receive calls.
- Voice messaging services that allow vacationing or out of the office employees to leave messages directing callers to other resources for help.
- Transferring systems for email to smoothly upload to voice mail attached messages.
- Calling services that rely on internet providers rather than expensive long distance phone calling plans.
- Video conferencing equipment that facilitates calls from many offices at the same time.
Much like, and directly related to, the internet services that offices across the country rely on, voice and data systems can make staying connected with co-workers and customers much easier. In fact, an increasing percentage of the customer communication that goes on in today’s business world is facilitated by services like video conferencing. In an increasingly interconnected business world, meetings between offices around the country, and often around the world, occur so frequently that airline travel is not always feasible. When, for instance, these cross country or international meetings only took place once or twice a month, a salesperson or tech support person could make the actual travel plans. When, however, several meetings in many locations occur within the same week, it becomes logistically impossible to make a personal appearance at all meetings.
Fortunately, the improvement and the ease of services like video conferencing can still allow for virtual “face to face” meetings. Saving both time and money, video conferencing is just one of many ways that technology is driving today’s business environment. In the case of video conferencing for small businesses, these technologies allow a competitive way for smaller staffs to compete with the large travel budgets of big corporations.
What Are Your Company’s Plans for Virtual Conferencing in the Future?
Not surprising, a 2015 study indicated that as many as 70% of contact centers planned to expand the use of virtual agents that year. Furthermore, predictions indicate that by the end of the year 2018 only 6% of the Americans will still be using the traditional landline phone network. As getting people connected to the internet continues to be a nation wide goal, it simply does not make sense for telephone users to continue to rely on expensive landline services that do not provide the options of today’s internet phone services.
And while existing businesses can see a cost savings when they switch to voice over internet providers (VoIP), the savings for new companies is even more substantial. Tapping into these technologies from the beginning enables new start ups to avoid as much as 90% of initial costs. Organizations with unified communications, including VoIP, saved more than 30 minutes a day for every employee, and the simplicity of being able to reach one another on a first try saved frustrations and delays.
